Last year, I brought to you a series of articles on citizenship and belonging over a period of four months.
This was later supplemented with another series on citizenship vs belonging where I tried to highlight places where attrition and negativity still resided when it came to cross-cultural understandings, accommodation and acceptance.
Here we delve into the history and lives of the girmitiya who made the horrific journey from key ports in India to provide desperately-needed labour for the plantations of the colonial government and its entrepreneur planters.
The 14th of May is a significant date for Fiji Indians (or Indo-Fijians) for two main reasons: one, the girmitiya or forefathers of Fiji Indians disembarked from the Leonidas and first set foot in Fiji on May 14, 1879.
And two, May 14, 1987 was the day that the Fiji Indian was told in no uncertain terms that he did not belong to Fiji nor Fiji to him.
May 14 therefore, has double resonance in the psyche of the Fiji Indian.
This year marks 144 years since the Indian arrived in Fiji as indentured labourers and 36 years since he began his forced journey to re-think his status in Fiji and look elsewhere for final acceptance.
This article is an attempt to rekindle interest in and maintain public awareness of the significance of girmit and its defining role in the creation of the Fiji Indian as a distinct category in the not-insignificant wider Indian diaspora.
It outlines briefly the arrival and struggles of the indentured community X— the inevitable loss of an established identity and creation of a new one in drastically changed circumstances.
Then it focuses on analysing briefly the case of the largest shipwreck in the history of Fiji and highlights how the local community hastened to assist total strangers who were in need.
It becomes evident through this narration why links must be further established and maintained between the Fijian and Indo-Fijian communities.
Finally the article focuses on the biggest Girmit conference to date that is being held at the University of the South Pacific as you read this article.
What was Girmit?
When Britain abolished slavery in 1833, demands for cheap labour from its empire had neither diminished nor subsided in any way.
In fact as the pioneering interest increased in Britain, demand in the colonies rose in tandem.
A replacement was speedily found in the indenture system where labourers were hired as semi-slaves at virtually negligible costs.
Pioneered at Aapravasi Ghat (Immigration Depot) in Port Louis, Mauritius, the indenture system delivered half a million semi-slaves from India to that African country between 1849-1923.
Guyana (238,909), Natal (South Africa — 152,184), East Africa (32,000), Seychelles (6,315), Trinidad & Tobago (143,939), Suriname (34,304), Grenada (3,200), Jamaica (36,412) and other Caribbean islands also received this much-needed labour input from the colony referred to as the “Jewel on the Crown”.
Ultimately, approximately 1.2 million semi-slaves were taken from India to serve the labour needs of the British Empire under the indenture system.
None of the reported experiences have ever been devoid of suppression, oppression, torture, injustices, abuse and a singleminded pursuit to extract the most out of labour for the least outlay within an environment that offered virtually no legal recourse.
The indentured labourer was invariably seen as a mere cog in the bigger scheme of things within the Empire.
Fiji was no exception in this regard as after being ceded to Britain in 1874, it also joined this group of cheap labour recipients within the British Raj.
Between 1879-1916, a total of 87 voyages were made by 42 ships hauling a catch of 60,965 indentured labourers from India.
Of these, 60,553 arrived intact on the shores of Fiji, the rest (412) succumbed to the barbarous conditions of the voyage.
Story of the ship that capsized
In one of these trips that was to become the worst maritime disaster in the history of Fiji, the Syria (a slave ship) ran aground at Nasilai Reef on Sunday May 11, 1884.
A total of 59 out of 497 labourers perished, but the help of Dr William MacGregor, the chief medical officer and Acting Colonial Secretary of Fiji and villagers in preventing this from becoming a total rout is understated.
The number of deceased increased by 11 over the next few days as the trauma and injuries took their toll.
What is significant is that people from nearby villages in the district of Noco ran to the rescue of these foreign people.
I, as part of a delegation led by Sashi Kiran (current Minister) and Dr. Hawea, tried to pave the way to this historic event where the descendants of the girmitiya from the Syria were formally accepted as part of Rewa in a traditional ceremony.
We went to Nabudrau Village as our research had revealed that Nasilai Village was very different from Nasilai Reef where the Syria was shipwrecked.
After we presented our sevusevu, the late Tui Noco, Ratu Isoa Damudamu, indicated that he wanted my brother (Junior Rao) and I to stay back as he wanted to talk to us.
As soon as the rest of the delegation had left quietly, the Ratu turned to us and said, “takia yani vei rau qori”.
With that, the whole atmosphere changed and he started talking about when he used to visit our village, Vuna in Taveuni.
As he talked, he began to look familiar and I blurted out, “Ratu au sa qai tauri kemuni rawa…. Kemuni dau vaculaki ira mai na neitou”.
He burst out laughing and mentioned my grandfather’s name.
We were at it for about half an hour until he gave us an escort who took us around the village and sites and narrated the following.
It was dark when the villagers realised that the Syria had run aground.
They could hear cries of distress and pleas for help in a language they could not understand.
Christianity was new to Rewa at that time, not everyone was steeped in the beliefs and doctrines of Christ, but they did not hesitate and rushed to assist and rescue taking considerable risk in the dark.
Later, they fed and looked after those who left the next day and those who had to stay back to recuperate.
Instructions from the colonial authorities was to bury them in mass graves.
The villagers however, decided to bury them in separate graves as they considered that more dignified.
Any reader would be moved by these instinctive acts of kindness towards a foreign people in need.
This is the part of the Fijian that is little understood and even less appreciated because Fijians of Indian descent are so blinded by legalities in how we view ourselves in Fiji, a country that has adopted us.
The Rewa- Syria story does not end there.
Ro Teimumu Kepa knew that these links needed to be firmed further, so on October 4 2016, the Marama na Roko Tui Dreketi with eight chiefs from the vanua of Rewa and a delegation from the girmit family presented their reguregu on the demise of the late Roko Tui Bau, Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi.
This took place on the chiefly island of Bau where only the privileged have ever set foot.
A well-loved high chief from the Tui Kaba clan had passed away and the marama had gracefully included in her delegation her new clan —
Luvedra na Ratu.
There is a story behind that i-cavuti.
An i-cavuti places its holder in a special place within the traditional Fijian system.
When you actually invoke your i-cavuti, the people around you are able to make links and determine how to relate with you.
The i-cavuti is given to a vasu or “adopted” person only by a chief and it has particular traditional significance.
Luvedra na Ratu was officially designated to the descendants of the girmitiya from Syria on May 5 2017 by the Marama when she unveiled a
plaque at Ratu Sauvoli Memorial School in Nabudrau, Rewa.
That i-cavuti was given by the Tui Noco, Ratu Isoa Damudamu who once entertained us in Vuna.
Narrations that remove debate
There is some debate as to how the labourers were recruited for Fiji.
Professor Brij Lal makes a strong case for the existence of agency among some of those who signed girmit, but there is little doubt that despite the definitional assertion that indenture involved voluntary labour, too many cases have been recorded of deceit in luring
people to sign the agreement that was referred to as girmit by an illiterate community who knew little about what they were getting into or what they were signing when they put their illiterate prints on those contracts.
The nature of how recruitment was perceived by the girmitiya is perhaps best seen in the word used for the recruiting agents — arkatis.
This word is still used as a venom-laden profanity in the Fiji Hindi language.
The recruitment process therefore, could not have been free of deceit and unfairness for the large majority of girmitiyas.
My maternal grandfather, Ram Lochan Singh, related one experience that has not been recorded yet.
A teenager from a landed family in Azamgarh, he fled home temporarily after being slapped by his elder brother, Parmarath Singh.
This made the 18-year-old a prime prey for the arkati who approached him as he rested at the roadside near his village, and offered him a short lucrative stint of work “one-day’s voyage by sea”.
The poor lad jumped at it and after 12 arduous death-defying weeks, found himself in Fiji.
His assimilation began in Nukulau where he was “processed” and sent to work for the CSR in Malau, Labasa.
A good number of other compelling cases have been made of drastic differences between expectations vs actuality that point to the devious and shady involvement and inclinations of arkatis.
There is much to be written and even more to be read in order to understand and gauge the full significance of girmit.
USP and the Girmit Conference 2023
The Fiji Government, in conjunction with the University of the South Pacific, and Fiji’s two other universities, is hosting arguably the largest conference on girmit at USP’s Laucala Campus on the 12-13 of this month.
Delegates will participate in person and via zoom links from throughout the world over the two days.
Sunday and Monday will be filled with other related activities that should help complete the celebration.
It needs to be noted that the Fiji Government has allocated half a million dollars for an event that had been hankered for over a number of
decades.
I have looked at the conference abstracts and can assure the public that lived experiences, archival research, and many other research outputs will be shared so that girmit is understood better in our quest to complete a part of history that has been sidelined for too long.
• DR SUBHASH APPANNA is a USP academic who has been writing on issues of historical and national significance. The views expressed are his alone and not necessarily shared by this newspaper or his employers subhash.appana@usp. ac.fj.
1) This is at odds with an article in yesterday’s edition (FT May 12, p3) where Dr Ganesh Chand says the date they first set foot on Fiji soil is May 26.
